overthere

Trudeau is completely meeting an election promise with the 10000 by end of this year. The only niggling detail is that it was an NDP election promise.

CbC has powered their way into having shows at #25 and #27 on that chart. We need to toss them another billion or two, see if we can crack the top 20.

The program in Alberta is not revenue neutral . There are no tax reductions elsewhere, as was the -plan in BC. It is a devious route, but basicvally the money goes out of my pocket and into Rachels. She has many debts to pay to civil service, teachers and nurse unions. They are all the best paid in Canada already , but.... you know. The program is more like Ontario than BC. Our electricity costs will be skyrocketing soon. More money out of everybodys pockets, plus lets not forget the multiplier effect when business flees. Like ON. I finally figured it out. Your name is Gil McGowan. Look, if you love taxes and trust the govt to invest wisely, nothing stops you from upping your own contribution right now, voluntarily.

Everybody wins? Everybody pays a big new tax. Corporations pass the cost to consumers, as they do in every case. The govt gets new revenue, none of which is earmarked to pay down the deficit or debt. If the tax is onerous enough, companies are not profitable any more, and simply leave taking jobs and taxes that are part of the $3billion and more. Note that many AB projects have been cancelled, and the new taxes from May 2015 are cited by some of them. Oh, and the real 1000 pound gorilla waits for the second sucker punch to industry in Alberta: the ongoing royalty review. Even the existence of a review causes jobs to vanish. Explain how everybody wins here. Take your time.

It does make Russia blink though. They know the West will turn turtle and not intervene in the Russian assault on the enemies of Assad, which is who the Russians were attacking in this case. The Russians don't really give a stuff about ISIS, unless it is ISIS versus the Kurds- then the Turks will support whomever kills Kurds. While Russia and Putin are overly fond of brinkmanship- the rubber hits the road when Turkey(NATO member) is shooting down their warplanes. Putin will exact revenge from Turkey, but not militarily. Mission accomplished for the Turks, in a way.

None of this will work unless two players are eliminated from Syria, and decisively eliminated. The first is Assad. He is simply representative of far too much death. Usually France takes in these deposed beasts, but not this time. I think he'll have to end up in Russia or one of their client states. Of course, Russia will have to be paid for this, and their price will start at keeping their naval base in Syria no matter who runs the show in Damascus. But Assad must go, and he will go if he thinks he has a chance of leaving with his life and the lives of his family. He'll also need assurances from everybody/immunity so he can travel the world without getting arrested as a war criminal. The other is ISIS. They cannot be controlled, so it is going to take a major ground and air war to get them out of Syria. That is obviously more problematic......

Speaking of phony facts... Canada does nothing of the sort. The vast majority of the roughly 250,000 immigrants we take each year are not refugees in any way. 95% of that 250k are picked because they can support themselves from day one, or have family members who guarantee that. All of them pay the costs of their own processing. Only 10k to 15k per year are actual refugees, and many of those are not supported by government resources but by private means, mostly charities. Canada could not manage 22,000 actual refugees per month. But we can easily manage 25k in one input, and will. Thanks to Mr Trudeau for climbing down on the timeline, allowing common sense to prevail.. Soldiers generally hate the outdated, cramped and generally shitty accomodations found on military bases. I wonder how much and for how long the Syrian families will love it? This will present a real challenge for CBC by about April/May- presenting feelgood stories about people who want more.. The govt is going to have to get them out of there as quickly as possible.......

Utter baloney. Canada is not and never will be an unaligned or neutral nation. Not with any Prime Minister, ever, and not with this one either. And no, you cannot blame it on the Great Satan Harper. Try as you will, his efforts to do at least some of the hard and heavy and bloody work required in places like Afghanistan was noted and appreciated by our allies. This was in sharp and stark contrast to the ill equipped troops Chretien sent to the Balkans, where we were lucky they were not slaughtered. The world sees Canada as a very desirable place to live, a trusted ally, an honest trading partner. solid financial and banking system that was best in the world in the recession. You can peddle the nonsense that Harper changed that, but in fact he was at the cventre of it. Yes, I know that you hate him- but the interntaional perception of Canada is favourable. Start pretending that you're Gandhi, and watch our friends turn their backs on us as they should. Turkey is our ally. Russia is not. Start from there.

Putin got into this ME buntoss because he wanted to show his rapt domestic audience what a global powerhouse the USSR Russia is again. Now he has had some peasants bring down an airliner with a soda can bomb and some other nonentities shooting down his air force. Vlad will not be happy, and he is just crazy enough to do somehting ....welll... crazy.

It's hopeless trying to get any kind of objectivity , they have found Their Jesus, and already had their Satan

Rick has been looking for s steady gig with good pay for a few years. In recessionary times, that means he wants to be in the civil service, nobody is going to be paying much for inspirational seminars now.. Nothing fattens a bank account like a double dip.

You missed #3, which was actually his very first act- announcing he was pulling our meagre contribution to fighting ISIS in Syria. I count that as a flipflop because he promised he was going to improve our global reputation as manifiested in Harper- which by the way was pretty much excellent, far better than his domestic reputation. By stating he was pulling our jets out, he left the heavy lifting to our allies(not A Canadian tradition, but certainly a Liberal one). Post - Paris- no change. There isn't a single leader in the G20 who doesn't look at Trudeau now and think 'is this man reliable?'. When the shit gets deep, you grab a shovel. Trudeau had our country cut and run, when given an easy out he turned that retreat into a full scale flight. Nobody in the real world gives a single shit about us training anybody. It's worse than a worthless gesture, here and now. #3. Oh, and I agree that extending the timeline is the only thing to do. Like everybody told him.

There are only two actual alternatives to provide BASE LOAD in Alberta. Nuclear. Natural gas. Thats it. Hydro: nope, the rivers are not right. Wind? AB already has a lot of winf power, but BASE LOAD. Notley gave industry room to expand because she has noticed, unlike many here, just how many projects have been cancelled or 'deferred' in Alberta. And no it is not entirely the current price of oil. All these oil sands projects are very long term deals, 50 or more years are planned. They know the price of oil goes up and down, but what they cannot predict are the whims and caprices of government.

And not a peep about electoral reform in Alberta.... despite PropRep being a chronic and sturdy plank of NDP platforms everyhwere in Canada for decades... it seems to magically disappear once they gain power occasionally and PropRep would make them a minority govt....... ie Manitoba and SK. And Alberta. Obviously not, since the Cons get substantial chunks of votes across Canada yet form only one govt- in Newfoundland. It favours nearly all the incumbent governments in Canada that gained <less than 50% yet hold majorities, which is most or all of them.

That is our national reality.

Show me links where those leaders state unequivocally that they support Kinder Morgan and Energy East, right now. Not prevarication and asshattery, but unequivocal support for getting on with it. Because the sky is falling. I'm already tired of the US and other countries eating our f***king lunch as they have with development of shale oil and non development of LNG exportsd. The Saudis and OPEC aimed their actions to stop the flow of shale oil and halt the take away of market share from the Middle East. Instead, they have squarely nailed our energy sector to the cross and crosshairs. Works for them, apparently works for our 'leaders', but it does not sit well with me since we can actually do something about it. But we don't.

Notley subscribes to the theory that when you're in a hole, keep digging. Example: complete refusal to acknowledge that in an economic downtown, it is reasonable to look at your expenses as well as revenue. She has kicked it up a notch by ignoring both, and gone the route of raising taxes and borrowing money. Not one single civil service worker will lose wages or their job while tens of thousands of private sector workers do both. That's 'progressive'.

From the article: other publications have noted that the $3B 'extra revenue'- which is simply more money paid by taxpayers for commodities they already buy today to get to work and heat their homes - will be 'reinvested' on energy alternatives and public transit and 'other government priorities'. Translated, that means a) the govt will start to heavily subsidize energy costs for renewables, an Ontario replay which means prices per kwh will rise very sharply for business and consumers- a jobkiller by every measure, public transit will be expanded in a place where cities are sprawling and existing transit is already heavily subsidized c) they'll think they have a mandate to piss away more billions on their friends and supporters. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Don't worry, they'll find another position for David Dingwall. O'Neill has worked at the museum for a decade and been the CEO for 5 years. I don't know if he is a Liberal.

So far, and I am sure this is a partial list: Trudeau, Wynne, Couillard, Notley and Clark. OK, they all occasionally make ineffective flapping noises with their gums to pretend otherwise, but none of them just come out and say what is obvious: we urgently need pipelines to tidewater right now on both coasts. It should be an urgent national priority, since it materially benefits all of us in the form of a realized social contract.

So the corollary is that governments don't have to be realistic? Does govt have any reason to create conditions where corporations want to invest and create jobs in the country? Or is their duty to do whatever they can to insure that those companies leave?

I'll amend that for a closer analogy, since the Minister in question was a serving member of the military when appointed Minister: do you think that an employed oil company executive would be a good choice as Minster of Energy? Same thing.

Two out of three of those are a certainty in Alberta. Notley has already jacked up personal and corporate taxes with the promise of increases to royalties in the near future. We can pretend that the current low price of oil is entirely to blame for all the investment that has been deferred in the oilo patch, but without question corporations look at our political landscape in this and other industries and say a whopping "no thanks". The other aspect in which Alberta is about to emulate the resounding failure of governance in Ontario is hydro costs: they are about to skyrocket in AB due to Notleys actions. All of this comes at the worst of times, and is voluntary. Oh, lets make it three out of three. Notley is paying abck her union backing by absolutely refusing to address the bloated, overpaid public sector unions in AB because... she owes them. An example is the cancellation of the continued outsourcing of laboratory services in northern AB. Another is her complete refusal to even examine civil service costs, when civil servants, nusreses, teachers are the highest paid in Canada already.. Ideology over sense...... Governments get into this navel gazing all the time....... What I wonder is if investing in infrastructrue is such a great idea- building when labour is cheap/plentiful and interest rates are very low- why aren't corproations rushing to expand their infrastructure? Why is the opposite happening in Cnada?

http://edmontonjournal.com/opinion/columnists/gary-lamphier-without-alberta-where-will-canadas-new-jobs-come-from Trudeau - and Notley- think that civil service jobs and fixing some bridges on borrowed money are the answer to this question. Government spending its way out of a downturn never worked before, why would it now?

There is little doubt now that the pain of Alberta is going to spread and spread hard to the rest of the country.